Ellen Gray

Television Critic

Ellen Gray is the television critic for the Daily News and the Inquirer, and has written about TV since 1994. Her mind will go blank if you ask her to name her favorite show, because she has so many, but she would love to hear about yours.

It's not uncommon for young adults to have trouble thinking about their parents' sex lives.

Fortunately, few of those parents discuss their proclivities with Howard Stern.

Sadly for Kelly Osbourne, her mother, Sharon, is one of the exceptions.

Osbourne's 27 now, and a co-host of E1's "Fashion Police." But she's not so old that her mother can't still embarrass her, something she acknowledged happened last month when Sharon went on "The Howard Stern Show" and talked, among other things, about anal sex.

"I go, 'Why did you say that?' and she goes, 'Don't you get it, Kelly? He will not stop until he gets an answer,'" Osbourne recalled Saturday during an E! luncheon at the Television Critics Association's winter meetings.

"I was like, 'Next time could you keep the anal sex out of it?'" she said.

(NBC, which will be putting Stern at the same "America's Got Talent" judging table with Sharon Osbourne next summer, would probably appreciate a change of subject, too.)

"I know for a fact that my parents don't [have anal sex] anymore -- they're too old and boring-- but at the same time, it's like, 'Mom, shut up, please,'" she said.

"Mom does not have a sex life…She makes it up," she said, laughing. "My dad goes to sleep at 7 p.m. at night, 8 p.m. at night, gets up at 4 and my mom works through the night and works all day. I don't know when they're doing it. I really don't."

The younger Osbourne, who's been in the public eye since her teens, thanks to MTV's "The Osbournes,"which premiered 10 years ago this March, seems philosophical about the attention she continues to attract.

Would she recommend growing up on television?

"No, I wouldn't. But I wouldn't take my life back for anything. And I think that growing up is one of the hardest things you'll ever do in your life and a lot of people never grow up. A lot of people don't. And if there's one thing I've learned in my life it is that not a lot of people like to grow up and common sense isn't common."

At 15, "we never thought the show was going to be about our family." She thought it would be "about my dad and we'd be in the background and it became this huge thing."

"You know the bad side of it -- you've seen it happen in front of you -- but I don't believe my mom would've survived her cancer if it weren't for the show, because she constantly kept working and there was a reason to get up every day…So all the good outweighs the bad," she said.

"It isn't something that I recommend doing, and I wouldn't do it with my children."